IASbaba Press Information Bureau 8th – 14th October, 2018

ARCHIVES

GS-2

Launch of National Health Resource Repository (NHRR)

(Topic: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health)

Country’s first ever national healthcare facility registry of authentic, standardized and updated geo-spatial data of all public & private healthcare establishments

Vision: Strengthen evidence-based decision making and develop a platform for citizen and provider-centric services by creating a robust, standardized and secured IT-enabled repository of India’s healthcare resources.

Key expected outcomes:

• Provide comprehensive data on all health resources including private doctors, health facilities, chemists, and diagnostics labs
• Establish a National Health Resource Repository for evidence based decision making – aligned with Digital India mission
• Enhance the coordination between central and state government for optimization of health resources, making ‘live’ and realistic state PIPs and improving accessibility of data at all levels, including State HODs, thus, decentralize the decision making at district and state level.

Key benefits of the NHRR project:

• Create a reliable, unified registry of country’s healthcare resources showing the distribution pattern of health facilities and services between cities and rural areas
• Generate real-world intelligence to identify gaps in health and service ratios, and ensure judicious health resource allocation and management.
• It shall identify key areas of improvement by upgrading existing health facilities or establishing new health facilities keeping in view the population density, geographic nature, health condition, distance, etc.
• The result shall be enhanced center and state government coordination to ensure intelligent use of health resources to ensure superior health access, service delivery and improve transparency & accountability for effective centre-to-state funding.
• The project shall improve the visibility of Private providers to enable Public-Private Partnerships.
• It shall also provide access to information on health service providers to the citizen of India for improved health outcomes and enable mass outreach with all stakeholders such as hospitals, laboratories, private & public doctors, blood banks, pharmacies, etc.

National Health Profile-2018: The National Health Profile covers demographic, socio-economic, health status and health finance indicators, along with comprehensive information on health infrastructure and human resources in health. CBHI has been publishing National Health Profile every year since 2005.

Cabinet approves

MoU between India and Lebanon for cooperation in the field of agriculture and allied sectors:

• Promote understanding of best Agricultural practices in the two countries and will help in better productivity at farmer fields as well as improved global market
• Increase agriculture production and productivity by getting access to best practices and market worldwide
• Lead to innovative techniques for increasing production and productivity, leading to strengthening of food security.

Memorandum of Understanding between India and Romania in the field of tourism:

• To expand bilateral cooperation in the tourism sector
• To exchange information and data related to tourism
• To encourage cooperation between tourism stakeholders including Hotels and Tour operators
• Investment in the Tourism and Hospitality sectors
• To exchange visits of Tour Operators / Media /Opinion Makers for promotion of two way tourism
• To exchange experiences in the areas of promotion, marketing, destination development and management
• Foster bilateral cooperation through film tourism for promoting the two countries as attractive tourism destinations
• To promote safe, honourable and sustainable tourism
• Facilitate the movement of tourism between the two countries

Memorandum of Cooperation between India and Finland on Environmental Cooperation

• Air and water pollution prevention and purification, remediation of contaminated soils
• Waste management including hazardous wastes, and waste-to-energy technologies
• Promotion of circular economy, low-carbon solutions and sustainable management of natural resources including forests
• Climate change
• Environmental and Forest monitoring and data management
• Conservation of Marine and Coastal Resources
• Integrated water management of Oceanic/Sea Islands

GS-3

Strengthening Forest Fire Management in the Country

(Topic: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation)

Fire has been a part of India’s landscape since time immemorial and can play a vital role in healthy forests, recycling nutrients, helping tree species regenerate, removing invasive weeds and pathogens, and maintaining habitat for some wildlife. Occasional fires can also keep down fuel loads that feed larger, more destructive conflagrations, but as populations and demands on forest resources have grown, the cycle of fire has spun out of balance. Large areas of degraded forest are now subject to burning on an annual or semi-annual basis. As these fires are no longer beneficial to forest health, India is increasingly wrestling with how to improve the prevention and management of unwanted forest fires.

Tackling forest fires is even more imperative in India as the country has set ambitious policy goals for improving the sustainability of its forests. As part of the National Mission for Green India under India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change, the government has committed to increase forest and tree cover by 5 million hectares and to improve the quality of forest on another 5 million hectares. Relatedly, under its NDC, India has committed to bringing 33 percent of its geographical area under forest cover and to create additional sinks of 2.5 billion to 3 billion tons worth of CO2 stored in its forests by 2030. Yet, it is unclear whether India can achieve these goals if the prevention and management of forest fires is not improved.

Recommendations:

• Developing a National Forest Fire Prevention Management Plan as an open, consultative and a time-bound process
• Institute standard management practices
• Adapt technology to local conditions, as well as scale up the best practices
• Increase engagement with local communities to ensure that big fire is used in a responsible way
• Give communities a greater say in decision-making process
• The National FFPM Action Plan should delineate the roles and responsibilities of the MoEFCC, state forest departments, communities and disaster agencies.
• There is a need to support forest fire management through improved data, and research to fill critical knowledge gaps. A national forest fire information database, bringing together satellite-based remote sensing data, and field-reported data, will be instrumental for assessing longer-term trends across states and regions and for planning fire prevention and response.  
• In addition, defining a national research agenda for fire management and provision of funding opportunities for scientific research would help to establish formal cooperation between members of the research community and the forest department.

Prelims oriented News

World Bank’s Human Capital Index

Broader theme of the World Development Report (WDR) this year is “The Changing Nature of Work”.

World Bank has launched a Human Capital Project (HCP) – The HCP programme is claimed to be a program of advocacy, measurement, and analytical work to raise awareness and increase demand for interventions to build human capital. There are three components of HCP-

• • A cross-country human capital measurement metric called the Human Capital Index (HCI)
  • A programme of measurement and research to inform policy action

• A programme of support for country strategies to accelerate investment in human capital

The HCI has three components:

1. Survival, as measured by under-5 mortality rates;
2. Expected years of Quality-Adjusted School which combines information on the quantity and quality of education (quality is measured by harmonizing test scores from major international student achievement testing programs and quantity from number of years of school that a child can expect to obtain by age 18 given the prevailing pattern of enrolment rates across grades in respective countries);
3. Health environment using two proxies of (a) adult survival rates and (b) the rate of stunting for children under age 5.

Note: UNDP constructs Human Development Index (HDI)

• The HCI uses survival rates and stunting rate instead of life expectancy as measure of health, and quality-adjusted learning instead of merely years of schooling as measure of education. HCI also excludes per capita income whereas the HDI uses it.
• Two significant changes from HDI are exclusion of income component and introduction of quality adjustment in learning.
• Exclusion of income element and introduction of quality adjustment makes HCI far less representative of Human Capital Development than the Index claims it to be.

Monitoring of Zika Virus Disease cases in Rajasthan:

• The Zika Virus has been identified decades back in Uganda where there is a river named Zika, the region around which the virus was first identified.
• The symptoms of the people affected with Zika are fever, red eyes, body aches, head ache, nausea etc. The virus causes only mild to moderate illness. The only vulnerable category is pregnant women.
• The peculiarity of the Zika virus vector i.e. Aedes Aegypti mosquito is active only during the day time and it can fly only up to 200m. Hence, it can be easily contained.

Section 151A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 mandates the Election Commission to fill the casual vacancies in the Houses of Parliament and State Legislatures through bye elections within six months from the date of occurrence of the vacancy, provided that the remainder of the term of a member in relation to a vacancy is one year or more.

Cyclonic storm ‘TITLI’ and ‘LUBAN’

‘TITLI’: over the Bay of Bengal

‘LUBAN’: over the Arabian sea

Foundation stone for development of Ghagra River as National Waterway (NW)-40 in U.P

• Ghaghara, also called Karnali, is a perennial trans-boundary river originating on the Tibetan Plateau near Lake Manasarovar.
• Cuts through the Himalayas in Nepal and joins the Sharda River at Brahmaghat in India. Together they form the Ghaghara River, a major left bank tributary of the Ganges.
• Longest river in Nepal
• Largest tributary of the Ganges by volume and the second longest tributary of the Ganges by length after Yamuna
• Lower Ghaghara is also known as Sarayu river and finds mention in Ramayana. Ayodhya is situated on its right bank.
• Battle of Ghaghra, fought in 1529, was a major battle for the conquest of India by the Mughal Empire.

Quotes

President of India Shri Ram Nath Kovind

Countering Radicalization: Challenges before Modern Society

• The battle against terrorism, extremism and radicalism must be fought, first and foremost, in the minds of people, between those who believe in peace, love and humanity and those who feed on hatred, death and destruction. It is a battle of opposing ideas, of humanity on one hand and a make-belief world on the other. Talking to the youth, our future; and scholars, our guide and pathfinders, therefore, becomes essential.
• Our society has always believed in the power of ideas derived from our history, civilization and culture. Our age-old values of Sufism, of humanism have shielded us against dark and ugly designs. The call of our revered Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya,– “Almighty holds dear those who love Him for the sake of human beings, and those who love human beings for the sake of Almighty”  binds our social fabric.
• The great Indian poet Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil, who is remembered fondly in the lands of Amu and Syr Dariya wrote :

चिस्त इंसान? कमाले कुदरते इश्क

मानिये काएनातो सूरते इश्क

Meaning – What is human being? Perfect expression of love. He is the true meaning of universe and face of love. If we instill this love for humanity in ourselves and spread the same to others, peace and love will prevail in our hearts, in our minds and in our world.